


“The Relationship between Situation and Identity” or “This Book Gave Me a Dissociative Episode”

by orphan_account



Category: A Complicated Kindness - Miriam Toews
Genre: Essay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-16 05:06:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17543234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Not a fic, but my Grade 12 term paper, which I wrote almost entirely the night before but still got an A on. I've edited it for general accessibility (using singular they instead of "he or she," adding in first/second pronouns, putting in contractions etc) but it still has fairly dense language. Rated M & has a Rape/Non-Con warning due to discussion of events that occur in the book, so if you've read or are expected to read it you're not encountering anything new.





	“The Relationship between Situation and Identity” or “This Book Gave Me a Dissociative Episode”

**Author's Note:**

> If you're looking at this because you also have to write a term paper on this book: You probably shouldn't straight-up plagiarize this essay, especially since the chance that you went to the same school as me or have literally the same teacher as I did is relatively high, but you could probably swing maybe a couple of the same points with at least some of the same quotes (conveniently cited in-text).
> 
> If you're reading this because you have to write a term paper on this book and you haven't read it, especially because it's a very irritating/stressful book to actually read: good fucking luck.

            It is indisputable that being raised in a small, religious town or some other location with a similar atmosphere can easily give a person lifelong mental health troubles, particularly if that person spent some or all of their formative years constantly yearning for somewhere better. An individual’s unavoidable reliance on and relation to the reality surrounding forms an immutable part of their identity. Nomi, the main character of Miriam Toews’ _A Complicated Kindness_ , lives in a small Mennonite town in southeastern Manitoba, and her and her family’s relationship with the community surrounding them defines the trajectories of both their destruction and of Nomi’s eventual redemption.

            It is impossible to decouple an individual from their past, as they will rely on information from it to make decisions in the present. Indeed, someone who relies on past experiences to make contemporary choices while neglecting to consciously analyse the reasons behind those choices can easily trap themself in an internally dissonant situation. For much of the novel, Nomi defines herself as a rebel against her stifling hometown, and yet has no intent or plan to leave it. This creates a destructive ideological divide within her, arguably driving much of her internal conflict. Despite utterly hating East Village, Nomi refuses to abandon her father, ultimately and tragically making her the most loyal member of her family. This reliance on using the past to guide one’s choices in the present also becomes extremely relevant in the discussion of psychiatric conditions such as PTSD or DID, which stem from techniques the human brain uses to cope with extremely high-stress situations. It’s unlikely Nomi has a condition as extreme, but the notion that she may have lesser dissociative disorder, fed by her alcohol and drug dependence, is not unlikely. The tone Nomi uses to narrate is disjointed and dreamlike, she mentions using pain to cope with sudden, intense emotion, in one case staring directly at the sun (Toews 67), says that her thoughts are only ever half-formed (Toews 98), and, while learning that taking birth control pills will make her body think it is pregnant, comments wryly that “there [will] now be yet another part of myself that [won’t] know [what’s] going on” (Toews 141). Nomi’s brain responds to life in this way because of the trauma incurred from the departure of most of her family, even if she’s not consciously aware of it. There’s also the difficulty of treating memories from one’s childhood as fact, when they are often either one-dimensional or completely inaccurate. Nomi’s view of how well her family functioned when it was still whole is distorted by the lack of experience and perspective inherent in being a child, and as the plot progresses, her view of what her family once was becomes more and more fractured, culminating in the revelation that her mother was having a long-term affair with Nomi’s English teacher, Mr. Quiring. This leads her to question whether her mother ever even loved her husband or children and permanently shifts the context in which she views her childhood, but ultimately she decides to still place value in her happy memories, even if only for what they represent rather than what they actually are (Toews 245). This is altogether a much healthier way to relate to one’s past than the constant idealized reminiscence shown throughout the novel. All of this combines to show that memories form a crucial part of someone’s internal reality, and that discounting them yields only a flattened view of an individual’s true nature.

            On a somewhat different note, If the adults in a community intentionally keep youth from knowledge of the world around them, those youth will seek out that knowledge themselves, often in ways that are significantly more dangerous than the outlawed alternatives. There is a belief that teens seek out drugs and alcohol simply to rebel against authority, but in actuality this behaviour is often because illicit substances are the only method they have of coping with the stress of their lives. Among the drugs Nomi mentions are cigarettes, alcohol, weed, hallucinogenic mushrooms, and amphetamines, with either the implication or explicit confirmation that Nomi is well-acquainted with all of them. She uses “drugs and [her] imagination” to keep herself from thinking about the “hateful question of where [her mother] might be, if not somewhere in the world” (Toews 54), which springs up after she finds Trudie’s passport in one of her bedroom drawers. Unfortunately, this type of drug use, which functions more as a form of self-medication than anything else, is quite common. Another reoccurring topic weaved into the plot is Nomi’s quest to get birth control pills, which she needs so she can let herself be pressured into sex with her boyfriend without worrying about any pregnancy-related consequences. It’s quite common for young women to feel pressured into having sex that they do not want at a young age because of the pressure to prove that they are rebelling against conservative society’s insistence that having sex before marriage is inherently immoral. Obviously Nomi’s knowledge of sex education is sorely lacking, given where and how she was raised, but thankfully she has enough presence of mind to be upset enough about how terrible her pre-planned sex with Travis was that “on the way home, [she slams the truck] into reverse for no good reason going fifty miles per hour” (Toews 216). These two aspects culminate together near the end of the book when Nomi is coerced into sex by her drug dealer (both “raped” and “sexually assaulted” feel overwhelmingly violent in relation to the terrifying calmness of the event itself), during which she blacks out. While facing abandonment from her society, Nomi is taken advantage of in one regard while seeking out emancipation in the other. The overwhelming neglect of a young person’s immediate needs by the adults around her directly led to her downward spiral and eventual breakdown, and perhaps that, in itself, is the greatest tragedy of this book.

            There is also the reality that memories of trauma, when not processed with the care they require, can easily grow to occupy one’s mind so constantly that they completely impair healthy functioning. It is clearly shown that East Village not only lacks any meaningful mental health support, but also that the church actively suppresses any discussion of mental health or mental health-adjacent topics. Experiencing grief and anxiety while lacking a trusted confidante to discuss it with can make someone feel like they’re going insane or their world is ending. The only reoccurring character in the novel who could be truly defined as Nomi’s friend is Lydia, who is hospital-bound and often unconscious. Nomi lacks any meaningful emotional connection with her father or boyfriend, and everyone else is her life is either ambivalent or openly hostile towards her, resulting in her having functionally no emotional support from her community. It is no wonder, then, that Nomi acts out in the way that she does, because moratorium on any frank discussion of mental health is actively harmful to any effort at recovery which one may make. The Mennonite church’s active rejection of any type of mental health support is mentioned by Nomi just before she finally gets her birth control pills: “[Doctor Hunter] had a reputation in town as a shit disturber because he believed in supplying birth control for the women here… he also liked to describe antidepressants. He’d written an article for the city paper that said our town has colossally huge numbers of depressed people… The Mouth said the piece was fiction” (Toews 134). This constructed inability to externalize the object of one’s trauma can cause a fixation on the past because it ensures that they have no opportunity to emotionally depressurize, and therefore cannot mentally move past the events that have befallen them. The novel itself is structured around Nomi’s memories, first about how relatively pleasant her childhood was, then giving a disorganized play-by-play of the sequence of events leading to her family’s disintegration. Within the context that the novel itself occupies in the narrative, a spite-motivated English assignment, the written narrative itself can be counted as the first time ever that Nomi gets the opportunity to vomit up the memories of her family’s dissolution, and perhaps this act of venting, in conjunction with her father’s departure, is what finally allows Nomi to allow herself to leave East Village.

            Finally, an individual can be defined by the choices they make in the context of their social environment; without this context, their identity is called into question. Rebellion without a cause accomplishes nothing, but it can still be the first step in beginning to think for oneself. Tash, Nomi’s sister, begins her character arc being edgy solely for the sake of being edgy. She begins by jokingly rejects the church’s teachings, but this slowly develops into legitimate political consciousness, partially aided by reading “pamphlets about communism and Albania being a great place” (Toews 119) borrowed from libraries in the city. In the present, Nomi imitates Tash frequently, listening to her old records and wearing her old clothes, but completely lacks any kind of political awareness other than being vaguely opposed to the church. For most of the novel she is a cardboard cutout of a person; if viewed in any context removed from the idea of Tash or the Mennonite church, her constructed personality rapidly falls flat. Thus, it’s uncomfortable and frightening to leave a reality you’ve become comfortable with, but it’s ultimately what’s required to transform from a subset of a community into an individual. Tash’s entire narrative arc is the carrying out of this progression, and eventually so is Nomi’s, as she becomes a person in her own right instead of her sister’s shadow.

            In the end, Nomi comes to the realization that if she wants her life to improve, she must actively attempt to either change herself or her community, and she opts for the former. As she muses near the end of the book just before she leaves town, “Who of us are… strong enough to make a stand and change an entire system or overthrow a church[?] Not the Nickels.” (Toews 241). By choosing to remove herself from the system that has chewed her up and spat her out, she becomes realized as an independent individual and can finally move on from the events in her past.


End file.
